SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel (15 page)

“It’s not a joke,” said Serge. “My tummy feels all fucked up. What was I thinking?”

“The other dude looks in worse shape. Listen to him moan.”

“That’s because he doesn’t have my warrior constitution.” Serge slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. “Prussian stamina is essential to reenacting classic Florida movies.”

“Is he going to die?”

“No, but he might wish he would.”

“You’re not waxing this dude?” Coleman sulked. “I thought this was another of your science projects.”

“It is.”

“Just eggs?”

“Maybe I’m losing a step with age.” He reached into the cooler again for a cocktail mixer, deftly adding a menu of ingredients before vigorous shaking.

“What’s that?” asked Coleman.

“Something to wash it down. It’s not healthy for him to eat that much without a beverage.” He poured the shaker’s contents into a martini glass and took a seat on the porch next to the prostrate lawyer. “Hey, film buddy, this will make you feel much better.”

The attorney held his bulging stomach and grimaced. “What are those fumes coming out of the glass?”

“A little dry ice. I saw it in the Tom Cruise movie
Cocktail,
and I’m a sucker for panache.”

The barrister hesitated.

“Listen,” said Serge. “If I wanted to kill you, there’s a whole arsenal in my car.”

The lawyer looked in the drink again. “You say this is okay?”

“I guarantee you’ll feel totally different after drinking that.”

“I’d do anything to get rid of this stomach ache . . . Here goes . . .” He drained the conic glass.

“Guess that wraps it up here,” said Serge. “I know I mentioned hours of stimulating movie conversation, but I just remembered I have to go watch
Absence of Malice,
another Paul Newman Florida flick about the law and journalism. Am I jazzed!” Serge unlocked the handcuffs and headed back to his car. “Well, toodles!”

The longest pause. “Just like that? . . . You mean I’m free to go?”

“Free as a naked jaybird.” Serge pointed toward his car with a thumb. “Unless you want to join us for the Miami
Absence of Malice
tour.”

“No, I’m good.”

The Cobra began driving away from the warden’s residence. Coleman looked out the back window at the attorney staggering from the porch holding his stomach. “I don’t believe it. You actually let someone go.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“But what if he tells on us?”

“Let him try.” Serge angled his muscle car toward the vandalized entrance gate. “That’s one of the keys to my new breed of fixer: Make the intimidation so weird and embarrassing that even if it is revealed, it’ll be laughed out of the room: ‘I want to report a stomach ache because a Paul Newman fan made me eat deviled eggs.’ ”

“And we used mirrored sunglasses at night and a stopwatch.”

“Exactly.” Serge uncapped a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

“By the way . . .” Coleman cracked a warm Schlitz. “What did you give him to drink?”

“That? Just a belly-soothing mixture of banana extract, guava, soy, virgin olive oil for the stomach lining and . . . oh, and just a tincture of pool chlorine. Those were the fumes, so I had to fib and say it was dry ice.”

“Pool . . . ? Isn’t that poisonous?”

“Oh, no! I mean maybe . . . well, yes—but only in a severely higher dosage than I administered—we swim in chlorinated pools all the time and swallow a lot of the water with little effect.”

“Hey, the dude back there is grabbing a tree. He’s starting to vibrate. You sure the chlorine didn’t poison him?”

“Without a doubt.” Serge turned the steering wheel toward the chain-link opening. “I checked all the swimming-pool concentration tables to be safe.”

“Then why did you put it in at all?”

“Yeah, why did I?” Serge asked himself. “Uh, right. Did you know that each individual egg has one hundred and ninety-eight milligrams of phosphorus, one hundred and thirty-eight of potassium and one hundred and thirty-two of sodium, plus a bunch of sulfur?”

“No.”

“And that’s just a single egg.” Serge shook his head with disbelief. “If you eat fifty—and who in their right mind would do that?—the last thing you want to drink is chlorine.”

“Why not?”

“The valence of the outer electron shell. I know I’m talking to a wall here . . .”

“You are.”

“ . . . But all those chemicals in eggs react aggressively with chlorine, releasing a tremendous amount of heat and creating sodium chloride, potassium chloride, et cetera . . . Very gaseous in the reaction.”

“Never heard of them,” said Coleman as a tiny man in the background burped with violence.

“Trust me: Those chemicals are out there.” Serge stopped at the gate and turned around in his seat. “Besides rocketing internal temperature, all those just-created salts would throw electrolyte balances off the chart, nervous system going haywire, organs shutting down, violent tremors, unconsciousness, worse.”

“Electrolytes?”

“Very important to keep your precious bodily fluids in the safe zone. For instance, doctors about to perform some surgeries had to stop recommending certain hilariously aggressive bowel-evacuating solutions for the night before—if you’re out there in our audience and took them, you know who you are—because people were dying from electrolyte crashes. And that was from a well-trusted over-the-counter product.”

“Electrolytes are that important?”

“Damn straight. You can actually kill someone with too much constipation relief remedy.” Serge stopped and tapped his chin. “Note to self . . .”

“Look!” Coleman pointed at the man flopping around in front of an oak tree. “Now he’s tearing off all his clothes and running around the porch screaming.”

“Must really be into
Cool Hand Luke,
” said Serge. “Some people are way too obsessed with movies. I don’t get it.”

“He’s stopped moving,” said Coleman. “What’s that mean?”

“Either he’s performing the Paul Newman death scene or it’s my first success as a fixer.” Serge mashed the gas pedal. “Let’s find something else that’s broken.”

Chapter
TWENTY

FORT LAUDERDALE

S
helby Lang swiveled on the steps. “What are you stopping for?”

Brook stared up at the Broward County courthouse. She took a shallow swallow of air and pushed ahead.

Shelby emptied his pockets for the metal detector. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

They were by far the earliest to arrive in the courtroom. Before the next soul appeared, all was ready at the plaintiff’s table. Files, notepads, water. Brook nudged a pen that was a half inch out of alignment.

After a nervous spell of stillness, the bailiff entered, followed by the court stenographer and a cast of local residents unconnected to any case who came to the courthouse each day because it was better than TV.

The double doors in the back of the courtroom swung open again. Brook turned around and gulped. In marched four strikingly handsome men in identical black suits and black hair. Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard. Blue tie, red tie, blue tie, red-and-blue. The imposing legal team of Riley and company took seats and opened briefcases in unison. An assistant wheeled in a handcart of file boxes. Someone else set up a giant easel for oversized, dry-mounted exhibits.

Brook elbowed Shelby. “Were they raised in test tubes?”

“Yes.”

Finally another door in the front of the room opened. From the judge’s chambers emerged a burly man in a black robe, a shade over six-five.

“What do you know about him?” whispered Brook.

“Judge Kennesaw Montgomery Boone?” said Shelby. “Let’s put it this way: We couldn’t have gotten a worse draw from the rotation. Totally sympathetic to corporations.”

“That bad?”

“He didn’t think the Supreme Court went far enough in
Citizens United
. Get ready to be overruled.”

They sat without talking. A single rhythmic sound bounced off the walls, Brook clicking a pen open and closed. She noticed Shelby staring. “Sorry . . .” Then curiosity: “Where’s the jury pool?”

“Won’t be one today,” said Shelby.

“Why not? Trial’s supposed to start.”

“It’s been delayed,” said Shelby. “Motion hearing. Just got a text.”

“What kind of motion?”

Shelby told her what he expected.

“But they were supposed to do that a long time ago. It’s unheard of at this stage.”

“Anything to disrupt us,” said Shelby. “Welcome to the opening shot in the psychological war.”

A gavel banged. “I’m ready to hear motions.”

A man stood at the defense table and told the judge what he wanted.

Shelby jumped to his feet. “Objection!”

“Overruled.”

“May I cite precedent?”

The gavel banged. “Court is in recess.” The black robe disappeared into chambers. Four men at the defense table simultaneously snapped briefcases and marched out of the courtroom with North Korean military precision, followed by a handcart of unopened boxes and an easel of unexhibited exhibits.

“That could have gone better,” said Brook.

“Short and sweet.” Shelby gathered stuff from their table. “Nothing I didn’t expect.”

“What do we do now?”

Shelby stood with his own briefcase. “Gas up the car.”

A
newspaper reporter in the back of the courtroom watched Shelby and Brook depart. He opened his cell. “ . . . Boone granted the motion. I’m going to need some travel expenses approved and at least a week— . . . What?
Another
mandatory meeting? . . . But I have to hit the road . . .”

A half hour later, a blue Datsun entered the company lot.

Reevis spotted a trio of crusty journalists heading back from lunch. “Guys, wait up!”

Three men on the opposite sidewalk stopped and turned. Ill-fitting jackets and threadbare shoes. Bilko wore his trademark porkpie hat. Danning’s jacket featured a bunch of thin blue-and-white vertical stripes like a southern lawyer. Mazerek had Brylcreem stains on his collar.

Reevis trotted across the street and caught his breath. “Going to the meeting?”

“It’s mandatory.”

The quartet strolled for the elevator. Danning stopped and pointed at a side door. “Let’s take the stairs.”

As they headed across the lobby, an unnaturally large number of colleagues began funneling toward the stairwell.

“What’s going on?” asked Reevis.

“The roach,” said Bilko.

“Roach?” asked Reevis.

Danning entered the stairwell. “You’ll see . . .”

In the latest wave of austerity, Reevis’s paper had cut two-thirds of the janitorial staff because shareholders never set foot in the building. Filth grew like weeds. Then came the roach . . .

Reevis trudged up the steps. “I still don’t know what’s going on.”

“One more flight,” said Mazerek.

Few had ever used the stairs until now. Foot traffic became thicker and thicker until it clogged to a stop on the third landing.

“I can’t see,” said Reevis. “Too many people.”

“They’ll move on,” said Danning. “It’s well worth the wait.”

It was. Other journalists satisfied their curiosity and resumed their ascent toward the meeting.

Reevis wormed his way to the front for a view. “What the hell? When did this start?”

Mazerek stared down at an overturned bug. “Reliable reports pin the roach’s death about a week ago, but nobody can be sure because the only people who take the stairs are the ones on diets.”

“A sports guy started it,” said Bilko. “He realized he’d seen the same roach for three straight days. And since it was so big, he couldn’t believe it hadn’t been cleaned up . . .”

“ . . . Then he remembered most of the janitors were let go,” continued Mazerek. “So the next day he made a tiny little cross for the roach. Journalists are already a strange lot, and sportswriters even stranger . . .”

“ . . . The next day he came back to see if the roach was still there, and someone else had left flowers,” said Danning. “Word started getting around and more and more people began taking the stairs. Next came some little candles, and the crime-scene tape went up. That was a week ago, and now we have this”—waving his hand over a bed of roses and baby’s breath.

Reevis bent down to look at a tiny framed tribute photo of the roach in happier days. “Looks like a mini version of that outpouring for Princess Di.”

“Frustration vents in weird ways,” said Bilko.

“These are fucked-up times for our business,” said Danning.

Mazerek pointed his cell-phone camera. “This time they’ll have to believe this is going on at a major Florida newspaper.”

“Better get to that meeting . . .”

They exited on the next landing and found the conference room. Smaller than the other venues, maybe thirty seats.

Bilko jerked his thumb. “Get a load of this too-cool-for-school punk.”

At the front of the room, a lean young man fiddled at another easel. Skinny jeans, loafers with no socks, untucked black dress shirt, spiked hair.

“Looks like some spoiled movie director’s nephew,” said Mazerek.

“Got the whole L.A. thing going on,” said Danning.

“
That’s
our consultant?” said Reevis.

The easel held a giant flip pad. The consultant folded the first page over the top. “If you will all take seats, we can begin . . .”

They started with a fever chart comparing revenues of various newspapers. Far below the rest was a dotted line tracking their own paper’s dismal performance. Another large page flipped over: a bar chart of anemic company stock. Another page: a pie chart from depressing ad sales . . .

Reevis whispered out the corner of his mouth, “What’s this got to do with reporting? I thought the consultant was supposed to teach us the latest journalism techniques, like advanced computer public-record searches.”

Danning leaned back smugly and folded his arms. “The whole object of this travesty is to shame us.”

“No, seriously . . .” said Reevis.

“Seriously,” said Bilko. “Just in case we get any headstrong notions about the added workload, they sling these belittling statistics at us.”

“The irony is that a prime job requirement for newspaper reporters is ultra-sensitive bullshit detectors,” said Mazerek. “And then they send in these bozos with see-through turds.”

“And notice how they’ve chopped us up into small groups?” said Danning. “Studies show that larger audiences risk a group contagion of mutiny. So just sit back like everyone else and let this jerk talk himself out about how we’re supposed to be doing our jobs, and then we can go back to the real job of putting out a paper.”

“Excuse me?”

The guys in the back of the room looked up.

The consultant was staring at them. “Am I boring you? Is there something you’d like to ask?”

“No,” said Mazerek. “We’re fine.”

Reevis’s hand went up. “Actually, I do have a question.”

Three heads in the back row snapped toward him. “What are you doing? Just shut up.”

“What’s your question?” asked the consultant.

“You make a lot more money than us, right?” said Reevis. “And you’re explaining how we need to be better journalists?”

The consultant couldn’t have been happier with the challenge. He grinned condescendingly:
I am going to put this twerp out like a wet cigar.
“Are those real questions or just rhetorical?”

Mazerek elbowed Reevis. “Will you shut up already?”

“Those were rhetorical,” said Reevis. “Here’s my real question: What’s an inverted pyramid?”

“What?” asked the consultant. He was the only person in the room who didn’t know where Reevis was going.

“An inverted pyramid,” the young reporter repeated. “What is it?”

The rest of the audience knew two things: One, they loved this. And two, Reevis was knotting his own noose.

The consultant grew red-faced. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.” He turned back to the easel. “Now, if you’ll take a look—”

“You don’t know, do you?” said Reevis.

Bilko covered his face. “Jesus, just drop it.”

“No!” snapped the consultant. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“How to prioritize facts for the most basic news story,” said Reevis. “It’s one of the first things they teach in your freshman year of J-school.”

The consultant took a deep breath and exhaled hard out his nostrils. “Are you finished?”

“No,” said Reevis. “What’s
New York Times v. Sullivan
?”

Danning smacked himself in the forehead.

The consultant placed his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“The most important libel case ever decided by the Supreme Court,” said Reevis. “Established standards of public figures and ‘absence of malice.’ Also taught freshman year.”

“What’s your point?”

“Just wanted to clarify something for myself,” said Reevis. “I picked the two easiest questions that even the worst journalists in America could answer. Please, continue telling us how to do our jobs better.”

The consultant stared at Reevis with a squint of rage, then knocked over the easel and stormed out of the room.

Danning raised both eyebrows high as he stood. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Kid, you got a pair of brass ones,” said Mazerek.

Bilko grabbed his porkpie. “Lunch is on us tomorrow.”

L
ike most newsrooms, the
Journal
’s was a large, wide-open space with columns holding up the ceiling over the sea of crammed desks. No cubicle walls, so reporters didn’t have to get up to shout to each other. Because it was the news biz. Along the south wall ran a series of glassed-in offices for upper editors. They had a view of the parking lot. The paper was approaching the early deadline for zoned neighborhood editions. Phones rang, keyboards clattered.

Three veteran reporters typed with urgency. They kept glancing over the tops of their screens toward the final office at the end of the floor, which belonged to the managing editor. Seated inside with his back to the glass was Reevis. The veterans shot silent glances at one another.

The door at the end of the room finally opened. They couldn’t get a read on the young reporter’s face as he returned to his desk.

“What happened?” asked Mazerek.

“They put a note in my file.” Reevis sat down at his computer. “And told me not to bother the consultants anymore.”

“That’s not so bad,” said Bilko.

“We admire what you did,” Danning said with a chuckle. “Just try to keep a lid on it at the libel class this Friday.”